Narconon's Disappearing Advisory Board

In December 1995, Scientology's front group FASE (Foundation for the
Advancement of Science and Education) put on a sham "detoxification"
conference in Los Angeles. The members of Narconon's Science Advisory
Board were in attendance, and posed for a group photo, reproduced on
p. 13 of this conference
report:

Why did Forest Tennant disappear? Perhaps it was because he was
found to be running a chain of methodone clinics. That would put him
strictly at odds with Narconon's teachings about drug treatment.
Tennant's name appears along with Megan Shields on many of the early
studies of the "Hubbard method" of drug detoxification. Apparently he
decided that methadone works better. Or maybe it just pays
better.

Why did John Duff disappear? Duff was the President of Narconon
International. But something happened, and he got cropped out of the
picture. Did he perhaps leave the Scientology cult? An article he
wrote on Marijuana is still on the web, and here is his picture circa 1992 with William
Benitez, Kirstie Alley, and some other Scientology celebrities, found
on a Narconon web
page in 2002. So it's not clear if he is really an "un-person"
and this is an incomplete erasure, or if he was cropped for some other
reason.

The final deletion occured in 2003, when Vladimir Ivanov was
Photoshopped out:

Why did Vladimir Ivanov disappear? Ivanov brought Narconon to
Russia, and was the creator of www.narconon.ru. In 2001 he had a
change of heart and
declared Narconon/Scientology to be a "Satanic cult". He even went
so far as to use the narconon.ru web site to attack Scientology. In
the screen capture below you can see the question, "Why the Cherch
[sic] of Scientology is dengerous [sic] for Russia? Vote!"

Vladimir Ivanov denounced Scientology on his narconon.ru
web page in June 2001. HaPKOHOH is "Narconon" in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Click here for full-size
image.

What's surprising is that W. Kent McGregor remains in the photo. But
by August 2007 he too, had been erased:

W. Kent McGregor: gone!

Why did Kent McGregor disappear?
McGregor, while at CARF, got Narconon their bogus certification. He
later left the US after losing a court judgment in a sexual assault case (and not
paying). Years later he settled with the plaintiff and is currently
living again in the US, married to a Scientologist and fellow Narconon
staffer. In the 2002-2004 time period they were working at Narconon
Arrowhead. Read more about Kent McGregor's
illustrious career.

Winston did not know why Withers had been disgraced. Perhaps it was for
corruption or incompetence. Perhaps Big Brother was merely getting rid
of a too-popular subordinate. Perhaps Withers or someone close to him
had been suspected of heretical tendencies. Or perhaps -- what was
likeliest of all -- the thing had simply happened because purges and
vaporizations were a necessary part of the mechanics of government. The
only real clue lay in the words 'refs unpersons', which indicated that
Withers was already dead. You could not invariably assume this to be
the case when people were arrested. Sometimes they were released and
allowed to remain at liberty for as much as a year or two years before
being executed. Very occasionally some person whom you had believed
dead long since would make a ghostly reappearance at some public trial
where he would implicate hundreds of others by his testimony before
vanishing, this time for ever. Withers, however, was already an
unperson. He did not exist: he had never existed.

-- "Ninteen Eighty-Four", by George Orwell
Did you ever read poor old George Orwell's uh.. 1984? Yes, yes, that's
wonderful. That would be, could be, the palest imagined shadow of what
a world would be like under the rule of the secret use of Scientology
with no remedy in existence.

-- L. Ron Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course, Lecture 20

(Thanks to Mike O'Connor for the quotes.)

Why won't they let Alfonso Paredes disappear? Dr. Alfonso
Paredes is professor emeritus of psychiatry at UCLA, and is not
happy that Narconon is still using his
name. Paredes was hoodwinked into an affiliation with Narconon
when the cult offered to fund him to conduct a study of its
effectiveness. That funding never came through, but Narconon
continues to trade on Paredes' reputation. He cannot retaliate
because his son is a Scientologist, and
family relations are already strained
because of Scientology's antipathy towards psychiatry.